


of course it had to be spiders

by esmeraldablazingsky



Category: Naruto
Genre: Everyone is friends, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Not Canon Compliant, Spiders, neji hyuuga vs an unspecified number of spiders, nobody can deal with it, sand siblings - Freeform, seriously a lot of spiders, why am i like this, wow that's a lot of characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 13:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10967922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esmeraldablazingsky/pseuds/esmeraldablazingsky
Summary: An important element to the creation of balanced teams is that there has to be at least one person who can deal with spiders.Or: five teams of young ninjas get put in cabins. There are spiders. Nobody is happy with this.





	of course it had to be spiders

Sakura set her bags down on the floor, only to see a spider crawling from between the floorboards. She sighed and moved her supplies- it wouldn't do to get spiders in her food, but it was still just one tiny arachnid. Not a big deal, by Sakura's standards. She'd known Naruto for long enough that nothing surprised her anymore. Sakura gasped and dropped her bag as a high-pitched shriek came from out in the hallway- it didn't sound like anyone she knew, and she raced into the hall, only to see that it was Sasuke. 

Sakura stared for a moment, completely taken aback by the scream, before she realized the real problem- it was spiders.

Sakura yelped and magnetized herself to the wall to avoid the tide of small black spiders that were pouring out of the floor and down the hallway. 

"Oh my god, ohmygod, I hate spiders," muttered Sasuke from where he was stuck to the opposite wall, staring at the ground in abject terror. "NARUTOOOO!" 

An orange blur crashed through the door at the end of the hallway and straight into the sea of spiders. Sakura sighed inwardly- that was. Exactly like Naruto. She didn't know why she ever expected anything else. 

Naruto, unlike Sasuke, mostly kept his cool. He shook the spiders out of his sandals and leaped up to join Sakura and Sasuke in crouching on the wall and watching as small black dots filled up the hallway. 

"How did that happen?" said Naruto finally. Sakura shrugged. 

"No idea," she replied. "My bags are still in my room..."

This was supposed to be a relaxing retreat to celebrate the anticipation of a calm week ahead, with barely any missions to carry out, but instead Sakura had ended up in a cabin full of spiders. Spiders, spiders, everywhere she looked there were just more spiders. 

It was getting kind of disgusting, actually. She went through a mental inventory of all the different ways to get rid of spiders- bug spray was a no, since it was still in her bag... wait a second. 

"Sasuke," Sakura began, glancing at him, "don't you have some sort of Fire Style thing that you could use? Because that would be really helpful right now." 

"Oh, right," said Sasuke, unsticking his hands from the wall to form a sign. "Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" He took a deep breath and Sakura jumped across the hallway to avoid getting charred. She closed her eyes against the heat as fire filled the space in front of her, forcing the spiders to hide under the floorboards again. 

"Okay, let's get out of here," said Sakura the moment Sasuke finished completely scorching the floor and the opposite wall. She made a run for her bags and immediately leaped out the window, breathing a sigh of relief once she was on the thankfully spider-less ground. 

"Whew," observed Naruto, landing beside her. "I wonder how the other groups are doing?" Sakura shrugged. 

"Hopefully better than we are..." 

~~~

Unfortunately, no group would be free of the plague of spiders that seemed to be sweeping the forest where the retreat was being held. 

"Hey, where's Shino?" Hinata asked, curious. Kiba shrugged and flopped onto the floor of their cabin, sighing. 

"He's refusing to come inside," Kiba explained. "He says his 'bugs are getting nervous,' which is kind of ridiculous if you ask me, but whatever floats his boat, I guess." 

"Hm," said Hinata. Something struck her as very slightly wrong, and it made her uneasy that she couldn't tell what it was. 

"Kiba, get up," Hinata ordered suddenly, jumping to her feet and snatching her bags off the floor. Kiba stood up warily, looking around to try and see what was going on. A moment later, Akamaru backed into the room, his fur standing up in all directions. Kiba was instantly on edge, slipping into a battle stance, but there was no enemy to be seen. With a sense of foreboding, Hinata slowly looked down. 

The floor was writhing with spiders, and Hinata screamed and tried driving them off with one of Neji's techniques. 

"Akamaru, get them! Dynamic marking!" shouted Kiba, stomping on some of the offending arachnids, but more of them just kept coming out of the cracks in the floor. 

"There's too many," whispered Hinata, trying to keep the spiders from infiltrating her luggage. 

"What did you say?" asked Kiba, oblivious. "Akamaru, c'mon!" There was an answering woof as Akamaru opened his mouth and started eating the spiders. Hinata paused for a second, suddenly struck by a completely unbidden mental image of Kiba shoving an entire handful of spiders in his mouth. She shook her head to dispel the thought and focused on not getting any living creatures in her shoes, or preferably any of her clothing. 

"Get Shino, will you?" said Kiba, kicking a spider off of his leg. 

"I- I don't think that's a good idea," mumbled Hinata. Bugs and spiders wouldn't be a great combination, in her opinion. 

"Just try," said Kiba. He waved Hinata out of the room and dusted a spider off of her jacket. "If not, I'll just have to help Akamaru with this." The image of Kiba eating spiders back in her mind's eye, Hinata ran out of the cabin and approached Shino, who was standing a little ways away, staring at the building. Or not- it was hard to tell with his sunglasses. 

"Shino, Kiba wants your help," suggested Hinata. 

"No," said Shino. 

"Is it because of the spiders?" asked Hinata. 

"I refuse to assist because if I enter that building, it will pose a danger to my insects," responded Shino. Hinata sighed to herself- why did nobody ever listen to her? She contemplated going back in, but decided she'd rather not watch Kiba put spiders in his mouth. He'd be fine on his own, anyway. 

~~~ 

"Shikamaru, wake up! You're covered in spiders!" Ino's shriek almost startled Shikamaru into full consciousness, but he decided not to open his eyes, opting instead to continue lying on the floor. Spiders, huh? 

"Shikamaru!" snapped Ino, trying to get his attention. Shikamaru continued to feign sleep, even though he knew it would fail eventually. Ino sighed. 

"Okay, fine, just lie there covered in spiders," she huffed, annoyed. Shikamaru didn't respond. He knew that Ino's resolve not to do anything wouldn't last long, but he might as well get some sleep. 

Shikamaru hadn't been waiting long when he was jolted violently back into wakefulness by something very heavy landing on his ribcage. Briefly winded, he opened his eyes only to realize that Ino hadn't been exaggerating. He was literally covered head to toe in spiders. Wonderful.

"Ow, Ino, why would you do that?" complained Chōji's voice from somewhere extremely close by. 

"Well, I have to crush the spiders with something, don't I?" said Ino impatiently. "You're the heaviest object in the room." Shikamaru stared at the ceiling in a wordless reprimand to any available deity for putting him in this unfortunate position. 

"...Well, I don't know," Ino was saying when Shikamaru finally decided to listen. "See if you can get him to do something, Chōji. I don't want spiders in my clothes, okay?" 

"At this point he's not going to get off the floor until tomorrow," argued Chōji. "Come on, Ino, let's just get out of here." Ino let out an exaggerated sigh and Shikamaru wondered if her glare was powerful enough to see through the layer of spiders over his face. Maybe. 

"I know you're awake, lazy," snapped Ino, nudging Shikamaru with her foot. Shikamaru sighed and lifted his arms the minimum amount required to form a Sign. He hoped that the spiders cast a heavy enough shadow to control them by. 

"Shadow Possession Jutsu... a success," he sighed, heaving himself off the floor and trudging out the door, spiders following him in a steady stream. He lost track of how long he had walked until he was out of eyeshot of the cabin, where he released the spiders and started trudging back. 

"You couldn't've done that earlier?" asked Ino, annoyed, as he walked in the door again. 

"Too much of a bother," said Shikamaru, lying down on the floor again. "We're on vacation, give me a break." 

"Thanks," mumbled Chōji through a mouthful of chips. "Nice of you to get up and do something helpful." Shikamaru muttered something unintelligible into the floor before falling asleep face-down in the middle of the hallway. Spiders or not, he really couldn't be bothered to get up right when he finally had time to sleep as much as he wanted. 

~~~

Neji had been uneasy from the moment his team had arrived at their cabin, but he hadn't grasped the scope of the problem until Tenten started screaming from inside the building. 

"NEJI, HELP!" she shouted as Neji skidded into the room, straight into a deluge of spiders coming out of the ceiling. Spiders. Of course it had to be spiders. Tenten was standing by the edge of the room, violently shaking one of her scrolls out of the window. Neji flung a slowly encroaching layer of tiny spiders off of his legs with a burst of chakra, feeling distinctly annoyed by the fact that, of all things, his cabin was filled with spiders. There was a loud whoop as Lee shot through the window, knocking Tenten to the floor and waving a flyswatter in a frenzy of motion. Neji sighed. Just watching Lee ricochet around the cabin was making him want to sleep, but unfortunately, the whole room was full of spiders, which Neji didn't particularly want to lie down on. Lee darted from place to place, yelling something that was too loud and too fast for Neji to attempt to comprehend. He watched his teammates try to stop the spiders from overrunning the room- Tenten in the corner with what looked like a giant wooden club, honestly where did she even get that and why oh why did she bring it- and Lee practically invisible except as a dark green blur, yelling and racing in circles. Ordinarily, Neji would have considered the situation aptly handled by his teammates, but to his shock and discomfort, there were still more spiders coming out of who-knows-where. 

"Lee, Tenten, get out of the room," Neji ordered, activating his byakugan. Tenten blinked at him curiously, but left, somehow managing to get the ever-hyperactive Lee out with her. 

"Eight Trigrams," began Neji. Tenten slammed the door behind her.  
"Four palms," said Neji to himself, obliterating an unidentified number of spiders. "Eight palms." He hoped that his power would be enough to rid the cabin of them. "Sixteen palms. Thirty-two palms." There were only a couple of them left, thank goodness, and Neji took aim. "Sixty-four palms!" 

He stepped back and looked around- there was no trace of any more spiders, save a normal amount, maybe two or three, remaining in the corners of the ceiling. Tenten edged the door open a tiny bit, and Neji waved her in. Tenten carefully tiptoed in, sighing in relief when she encountered no more than one spider after a few moments. 

"Thanks, Neji," she said, smiling. "I can't believe it took that much just to get these darn arachnids out of our room." Neji nodded, lost in thought. 

"I wonder if it's like this with the other cabins," he said. Tenten shrugged. 

"Who knows. I'm pretty sure I heard Sasuke yelling at Naruto earlier, so maybe, but that could've just been them fighting as usual..." 

"Whatever is happening, it's unusual," concluded Neji. "But it's only spiders so far. Everyone should be okay." 

~~~

"There's a spider in my puppet," grumbled Kankurō, pulling it out and stomping on it. "Ugh, now I'm going to have to check every-" he stopped and Temari turned to see what had happened. Kankurō was staring at the open body of one of his puppets- at first glance, nothing was happening, but as Temari looked closer, she could see what looked like a mass of tiny black dots coming out of the floor and inching its way towards Kankurō.

"Ew, shit," he muttered, smacking them away from his clothes. "That's disgusting." He got up to try and brush all the spiders off of his shoes, only to freeze as he realized that they weren't just on his puppets, they were all over the room. 

"Aargh!" yelled Kankurō, jumping back and attempting to squash the spiders with his bag. "They're everywhere- Temari, did you do this?" 

"Of course not," snapped Temari, scraping spiders away from her feet with the end of her fan. "I don't like spiders any more than you do." She snuck a glance at Gaara, who was standing in the doorway with that peculiar look on his face that he got sometimes, halfway between completely blank and vaguely disgusted. Small bursts of sand were picking off any spiders that got too close to him, but Gaara himself didn't move at all, simply stood and watched, fixated. There was a crash from the other side of the room as Kankurō wildly flailed at the spiders with a bag of Temari's knives, muttering curses under his breath the whole time. Temari kicked at the spiders milling around her feet, frowning in distaste. There were just too many of them- even Gaara was starting to look sort of put off, his sand clearing a circle around him in the ever-increasing tide of spiders. Meanwhile, Kankurō had resorted to beating off the spiders with every object he had in hand, even the arm of one of his puppets, but to no avail- the spiders just kept increasing, flooding from every available surface of the room. Temari gasped as she felt the altogether unpleasant sensation of a spider crawling up her leg, and fought to remain composed as she slapped it away. 

"I hate this," complained Kankurō in between bursts of chakra aimed at the spiders trying to get into his shoes. 

"This is... not ideal," agreed Gaara, staring at the infestation in distaste. Kankurō let out an exasperated huff of breath. 

"Easy for you to say," he muttered. "You have an automatic defense." As if in response, the sand swept away most of the spiders close to Kankurō, and Gaara gave him a pointed stare. 

"There's nothing I can do about this," said Kankurō. "There's just too many of these damn things." There was a spark in Temari's eyes and a smirk playing on her lips, and Kankurō fell silent. Either she had a great idea, a terrible one, or possibly both, and Kankurō would bet his puppets on both. 

"Get behind me," she ordered, planting her feet shoulder-width apart and spreading her fan. 

"Oh, no," muttered Kankurō. Whatever it was that she was planning, it wouldn't end well, but at this point, all that mattered was that the spiders were gone. Gaara said nothing as he ducked below the range of Temari's fan, but he did shoot Kankurō a furtive glance that told Kankurō he was thinking the same thing. 

Temari raised the fan above the sea of spiders and brought it down, hard. A vicious gust of wind tore the spiders from the floor and flung them into the far wall, which creaked and groaned dangerously before detaching itself from the cabin with an awful splintering sound and flying off the building entirely. 

There was silence for a moment as all three siblings waited for the dust to clear.

"I think all the spiders are gone," observed Kankurō.

"Yes, but so is the side of your cabin," said a dry voice from outside. Temari stared through the particulate in the air until a figure became clear- Baki stood where the wall had been, looking both amused and thoroughly unimpressed. 

"...hi," said Kankurō, glaring at Temari. 

"Sorry," said Temari, not sorry at all. 

"It was a necessary step," said Gaara without looking up. Baki sighed. At least the spiders were gone. 

~~~

"My sincere apologies for all the spiders," said Kakashi later that night when all the teams had gathered for a meal. 

"Did you put them there?" demanded Naruto. 

"Of course he didn't," hissed Sakura, elbowing him in the ribs. Sasuke said nothing, only huffed angrily and kept his arms crossed over his chest, indignant over the embarrassments he had suffered earlier in the day. 

"I didn't know you were scared of spiders," said Naruto. 

"Shut up," growled Sasuke. 

"You can stay with us if you want," Chōji offered Temari, ignoring Shikamaru's protests. Gaara had already made arrangements with Team Guy, and Kankurō with Team 8. 

"They're getting along, I guess," observed Baki from the sidelines, vaguely surprised. Kakashi nodded. 

"This was part of what we considered while forming these teams," he said. 

"What was?" asked Baki. 

"Each team has to have at least one person who can deal with spiders," explained Kakashi as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

"That seems unnecessary," said Baki.

"Clearly not," replied Kakashi, a glimmer of mirth showing in his eye. "None of the Konoha teams tore an entire wall off of their cabin, did they now?" Baki grumbled something unintelligible. Sure, the Leaf students had won in that respect, but as Baki watched his own trio separate into different cabins, he couldn't really bring himself to mind much. No harm had come of it, anyway. 

"You're a menace, Hatake," he said to Kakashi, who shrugged. 

"Hm. Well, good night," he replied, in a tone that distinctly implied that he was hiding something. 

As Baki set foot in his own cabin, a single spider crawled up his leg. 

~end~

**Author's Note:**

> comments will literally make me melt into the floor (also why did I write this? Honestly don't ask I have no idea)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Great Akatsuki Versus Spider Battle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10975953) by [CannibalisticApple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibalisticApple/pseuds/CannibalisticApple)




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